Are Israel and Turkey about to resolve their bitter feud?

Jerusalem and Ankara are reportedly on their way to signing a 'memorandum of understanding’ at secret talks held in Switzerland. If so, it could not have come at a better time. In the midst of the EU's branding of Israeli products from West Bank settlements and the BDS campaign being mounted against the Jewish state, Israel will have scored a major strategic coup with Turkey. However, government sources in Jerusalem caution that 'it's not over until it's over’ and Erdogan is known to be very unpredictable. Just ask Russia's President Putin. But if two of the strongest states in the region are about to bury the hatchet, it is unlikely they will restore their former alliance that was the most powerful in the Middle East.

When Barack Obama and Israel's President, Reuven Rivlin, lit Chanukah candles in the Oval Office, they also cast some light on the truth about the U.S. -Israeli relationship. In the past, much was made about the 'bad blood' between Obama and Netanyahu - Barack Hussein Obama was a closet anti-Semite, although most of his closest friends and advisers were Jewish. On the other hand, a close aide to Obama even accused Bibi of coming close to using the N-word! The Obama-Rivlin meeting has gutted these assumptions. At the same time, it has revealed some underling truths about the Obama-Netanyahu feud over the last nearly seven years. Obama and Bibi simply had different perceptions of what policies they wanted to follow after identifying what their voters would support. Naturally, they were democratically elected.

While over 190 world leaders gathered for the global warning conference in Paris, the planet was boiling over in more ways than one. The gathering in Paris, the city whose lights were dimmed by the Daesh atrocity, has been followed by San Bernardino. No, there is still no proof that Syed Farook acted on Daesh orders, but after the Paris attacks Daesh warned that 'Washington' would be next on its hit list. Bear this in mind: the late Dov Yinon, an eminent Israeli expert on Arab affairs, said that whenever some Muslims are exhilarated by a successful terror attack, they dream about also carrying out such acts. This could very well be what happened with Syed Farook, and the FBI is now checking back on his possible 'radical' connections. In the meantime, Daesh has praised the San Bernardino attack, some calling the killers 'Lions who have made us proud!'

One of the biggest obstacles in the way of the Arab Israeli peace treaty remains the Palestinian refugee problem.

During the War of Independence (Nakba) around 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from modern Israeli territory.

Modern historians and official Israeli history state most Palestinian refugees left in order to avoid a war instigated by neighboring Arab states. Though Israel admits to a small number of expulsions and unauthorized killings, it has maintained that the reason that most Palestinians left Israel during that time was fear of the Israelis and the notion that they would return once the man, Arab states attacking the Jews won, eradicating the Jewish presence. However, the war resulted in a very different outcome with Israel defeating the Arab League’s forces and overtaking more territory then was allocated to it by the U.N. prior to the Arab attack on the fledgling state of Israel.

Can Israeli jets also clash with Russian aircraft that are flying over Syria?

The furious confrontation now raging between Russia's Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Recepp Erdogan has raised this nightmare in Jerusalem. A senior Israeli Air Force officer has said he does not know what caused the Turkish jet to shoot down the Russian aircraft along Turkish-Syrian border, but indicated that chances are slim this could happen between Israeli and Russian jets. Israel and Russia have been operating an online communication network to prevent such an incident. At the end of a major Israeli Air Force exercise that has been conducted over northern Israel, the IAF officer said:

"We refrain from flying close to one another in order to prevent the pilots from having any question marks about the other's intentions. The intention is not to shoot down any Russian aircraft. Russia is not the enemy. We try to prevent any friction with the Russian aircraft, and their pilots refrain from any friction with us."

“We will conquer Rome and then the two Americas … the Jews, Christians and Communists must all be killed, to the last one …"

"...the Jews are planning to blow up Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

This is the propaganda being disseminated in the media, sponsored by Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, and sometimes also by the Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank. In other words, the ISIS leaders’ idea of conquering Rome is actually shared by all the Islamic Jihad organizations. Hamas actually said the same things long before ISIS. In this sense, there is no difference between the global jihad perpetrating mass murder in Paris and the global jihad trying to kill Jews in Israel.

In Paris, President Francois Hollande calls it a 'war' against Daesh (ISIS).

The French leader has ordered his sole aircraft carrier to head urgently for Syria to reinforce the French jets that carried out the first coalition air strike against the Daesh oil facilities. Income from the oil funds 50% of its operations in Syria, Iraq, Sinai, and Europe. But the response of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was to abort Canada's combat role against Daesh in the Middle East. At a time when the Free World nations should rally to the aid of France, Trudeau has declared: 'Count Canada out!'

If this is not a 'clash of civilizations' it comes quite close.

ISIL's writing was on the wall, or should have been - but no one was really ready to see it! After the targeted killing of ‘Jihadi John’, Britain had better be on very high alert. ISIL has escalated its murderous campaign beyond the borders of Syria and Iraq. First Russia, and then the West, stepped up their operations in Syria, and ISIL has hit back hard.

First came the blowing up of the Russian airliner over Sinai, then the horrific suicide bombings in the Hezbollah quarter of Beirut, and now the killing spree in Paris. After blowing the Russian airplane to smithereens, ISIL then issued a video threat to Israel:

'Don't think that because we are fighting in Syria and elsewhere that we have forgotten about you... we are coming to get you in Eilat!'

U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter: 'There's no question that American lives have been saved by Israeli technology - the Israelis have contributed more than Europe'

Senior White House Official says it is unlikely that President Barack Obama will achieve goal of reaching Israeli-Palestinian peace accord

The signals from Washington are unmistakable. With Israel's Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu about to go to the White House, President Barack Obama has decided to bury the hatchet. Despite Netanyahu's intrusive campaign to torpedo the Iranian nuclear deal, Obama now has the Iranian nuclear deal under his belt. Moreover, with the Middle East coming apart at the seams and Russia's military expansion into Syria, Israel is emerging as America's most dependable ally in the region. And with the Presidential election looming, Obama must also consider the Jewish vote after his bashing of the Jewish state over the Palestinian issue. After Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas rejected negotiating with Netanyahu in favor of seeking an imposed solution at the UN, Obama has called it a day. Despite the dire warnings that Netanyahu has caused irreparable harm to the 'special relationship' between Israel and the U.S., this is apparently not the case. (Granted, Bibi's address to Congress was a bit too much).